I’m Libertarian. I voted for Gary Johnson. But I live in Oklahoma, which is as conservative as you can get and the GOP candidate will always win no matter how I vote. That does not stop people from accusing others like me for ruining the election for their candidate.

Of course people accuse Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson and Green Party candidate Jill Stein of costing Hillary Clinton the election against Donald Trump. The Wall Street Journal looked through the evidence and found that neither one hurt Hillary.

If 60% of the combined Green Party-Libertarian vote had gone to Mrs. Clinton and 40% went to Mr. Trump, Wisconsin and Michigan would have flipped to the Democrats — but Mr. Trump still would have won the election. The same outcome occurs if 65% of the Green and Libertarian vote is assigned to Mrs. Clinton, while 35% is given to Mr. Trump.

Not only does this show the non-effect of the third-party vote, but it always shows just how handily Trump beat Hillary:

With 99% of precincts reporting, Libertarian Party nominee Gary Johnson and Green Party nominee Jill Stein together drew about 4% of the national popular vote — the highest third-party vote total in 16 years. The more than five million combined votes that the two of them drew together were much bigger than Mr. Trump’s narrow winning margin over Mrs. Clinton — leading to questions about whether Ms. Stein and Mr. Johnson played the role of spoilers.

The analysis, in which third-party votes were reassigned to both Mr. Trump and Mrs. Clinton, finds that Mrs. Clinton would have needed to win 70% of the vote share that went to the Libertarian and Green parties across all eight states to claim victory. Capturing that percentage of the third-party vote would have put Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin in her column — giving her enough electoral votes to narrowly win the election.

I also wonder if these people realize how ridiculous they sound when they claim that a LIBERTARIAN candidate somehow stole votes from one of the most big government candidates I have ever seen. Libertarians hold conservative views with money since we desire as small government as possible. Hillary IS NOT THAT.

I could see the argument with Stein since the Green Party has similar views to the Democrats, but they accuse the Democrats “of being insufficiently progressive and beholden to big business and special interests.” Stein also lashed out at Hillary’s war mongering, which she can deny all she wants, but in a leaked speech, she told Goldman Sachs she wants covert operations in Syria.

Now, say that Hillary did swipe all of Stein’s votes. She still “needed to win more than 50% of Mr. Johnson’s supporters to flip enough states to win the election.”

Trump ended up winning by enough in Iowa, Ohio, and North Carolina that third party candidate votes to Hillary would not have caused a dent:

In Florida, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Arizona, the third-party vote was larger than the difference between Mr. Trump’s defeat over Mrs. Clinton. In Iowa, Ohio and North Carolina, Mr. Trump racked up a larger margin than Mr. Johnson and Ms. Stein’s vote combined. Wisconsin was the only battleground state where Ms. Stein’s vote share alone was enough to tilt the election to Mrs. Clinton.

So, in other words, stop blaming the third party candidates. Hillary needed those votes plus a YUGE chunk of votes from Trump in order to win.

Comments

There’s no way to know whom a third party voter would have voted for, or whether they would have voted at all. But there’s also the Bernie factor – how many Sanders supporters came to see Hillary as an establishment candidate and either voted Trump or didn’t vote at all.

I haven’t been able to find much good information on this, but one data point is New Hampshire – a state where Bernie had a 20+ point advantage in the primaries. Even after Bernie endorsed her and did some joint appearances with here there she still really struggled and only won by a few thousand votes.

The Bernie Crowd had quite a presence on reddit’s Trump groups. They hated Hillary more, because they had proof she cheated them out of the primary nomination. They claim they held their nose and voted Trump to get revenge.

Not sure about that, but it’s certain that millions of Bernie supporters refused to vote for the Dem nominee.